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I’ve been reading through a lot of newly listed flooded homes out on the west side. There are some clever real estate agents out there really trying to smear lipstick on these pigs.

– Flooded first time due to Army Corps of Engineers
– An opportunity to remodel this 1st time flooded home
– Investors opportunity on Harvey Flooded home

Fact is that this prime market for homes is going to change drastically over the next 10 years. Homes underwater for a day or two can be rebuilt but what about the homes underwater for over a week? Huge portions of this area are going to have to be demo’d. It will be interesting to see what comes up in it’s place.

Mr. Clean, the demos were already happening well before Harvey. The north side of the Bayou is an area near major high-paying employers and zoned to very desirable public schools. The older homes were already being torn down and replaced with fancy customs. Harvey is only going to accelerate the process.

Plus many of the agents can’t be bothered to take actual photos of the house in its current state. They just show some pictures from when the house was last listed years ago. If I were looking to buy one of these flooded properties, I want to know that some remediation or demo has been done. A few of the houses are shown down to the studs (which look like they have been treated and are relatively clean), others are still a mess and the studs are covered in mold and just look like festering sores. Maybe that’s better than a house that has had 0 remediation done and has just sit there, fermenting for 10+ weeks: http://www.har.com/137-sage-road/sale_66217574 . If I owned a unit next to that giant petri dish, I would be all sorts of upset.

Homes underwater for extended periods can be rebuilt, as long as they were not subjected to currents sufficient to cause major structural damage or foundation scour. They just take longer to dry out (ours took over a month).
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Like LP said, in many of the flooded neighborhoods north of the bayou, original-condition homes had basically no value before the flood (ie they were being sold for lot value and torn down). The process is indeed accelerating, with new builds being elevated a la Bellaire and Meyerland.
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The big question mark for me is how much of a market they’ll be for $1+ million new homes in a potentially flood-prone area (even if your elevated home doesn’t flood during the next big one, you’d likely lose the cars in your non-elevated garage and need to be evac’d by boat). The market was soft in the Energy Corridor even before the flood. A new supply of high-end homes doesn’t automatically beget demand. Hopefully the new MD Anderson complex in the area will help (and potentially spur further diversification of employment in the Energy Corridor beyond oil and gas).